Drift by Rachel Maddow

Drift
by
Rachel Maddow
read by
Rachel Maddow

I didn't know what to expect going into this book. I knew Maddow was left of center, but not how far or to what ends. I had heard her described once as the foil to Rush Limbaugh. I had no idea what that meant at the time. I think I might now. I had seen her once on the Daily Show with John Stewart. She seemed funny in an intelligent kind of way, and had a radio voice, which made more sense when she revealed in the book that she worked for Air America.
This book is scary. Maddow never says things like "secret government" or "cabal" but you get the strong feeling that there is one, and not the kind we are used to, run by the politicians or religious leaders, but rather by the military, well ex-military really, and the captains of industry, to which I probably should have been thinking "junta".
This is not a book that claims that all Republican Presidents are bad and all Democratic Presidents are good. It is pretty much that they all suck. What's that old axiom about power corrupting?
I was asked when finished if I would recommend this, and I didn't even hesitate. I told her "no". Well written, well thought-out, well presented, and I believe largely very accurate. All of which make this book uber-depressing. This isn't one of those books where you feel empowered at the end, you know, go out and register some voters, call your Representative. I felt quite the opposite as a matter of fact. But, maybe I should have recommended it to her, and ask her to pass it on to her friends and I could write about it on facebook and we could mobilize and start a movement, one that our Representatives and Senators would have to listen to, right until they hired some contractors who are still being ignored by Big Media to come and quiet us, the kind of quieting that you never speak up from again. And while I could fight the fight, or whatever, I wouldn't put my friend and her friends and my facebook friends through this. Part of me thinks I am writing this to be silly to put a point on what I am saying - the argument from absurdity - but an equal part of me thinks that's really how it would go if we became the squeaky wheel.
Bleh. Today I am a pessimist, or maybe a realist, or maybe they're the same thing after all.

Paul (2011)

Not counting the franchise films where he plays supporting roles, the last comedy by Simon Pegg was 2009's How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, which I must say was an amazingly shitty movie, so much so that I almost swore off watching Pegg ever again. The abysmal crappiness of this film was compounded by the film immediately before it, 2008's Run, Fatboy, Run - directed by David Schwimmer, whose main qualifications seem to have been that he could show up to the set - this was another turd of a film, though not as bad as the next one. You could see how after watching these two films, in which one of my favorite comedic actors just craps out, why I would be hesitant to watch Paul.
Two factors brought me to this film, to give Pegg another chance. First, I read Nerd Do Well, Pegg's 2011 memoir, and it was funny and was read by Pegg himself. Second, Nick Frost  costars with Pegg in this film and I loved him with Pegg in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
I am so glad I watched this. Ok, to be completely forthcoming, I would have eventually watched it even if I hadn't been heartened by the book, or known that Frost was going to be in it. I just would have waited a couple of years like I did with the pair of craptastic films mentioned at the top.
Is this film as funny or as original as Shaun of the Dead? Yes, I think so. It has very much the same quirky feel to it and a similar type of ending. The supporting cast really makes this film pop just like SotD, in the way that Bill Nighy took the small role of Pegg's step-father and ended up owning most of the scenes he was in, Jason Bateman plays Agent Zoil with the same kind of understated brilliance. These two men are clearly better actors than Pegg and Frost, by which I mean no disrespect, and give their respective movies the push they need to be thoroughly enjohable. I have got to mention two other actors in the film and the surprise performances we saw. Sigourney Weaver is the head of whatever agency is in charge of keeping Paul's secret and is the movie's villain, a role which we rarely see her in and to be objective about it, that may quite likely because she would fall flat with them just like she did with this role. I am reminded of the last time I saw Weaver host Saturday Night Live - it was totally horrible, as he lines were delivered as if she had never seen them before, as she stared at the cue cards in a way that actually made you believe that she had not spent any time rehearsing the skits. Interestingly, the other notable performance is by Kristen Wiig, of Saturday Night Live fame. Fortunately, it's nothing like Weaver's performance. I can't say that I'm that big of a fan of the stuff Wiig did on SNL, some was good, some was bad, but most were not memorable. However, her character in Whip It! was great and she does the same in this film, being a total joy to watch.
Finally, I can't write this without mentioning the elephant in the room - Seth Rogen doing the voice of Paul. If you've read my thoughts on Rogen, you know that I dont' think much of him as an actor, which is not to say that I think he sucks. He does the doofus stoner brilliantly. Unfortunately, that seems to be all that he does. Name one movie for me where he isn't that character, I dare you - even in the Green Hornet for god's sake. His voice works for Paul in that the little alien is a doofus stoner, though I've got to admit it was hard to take at first because Paul is so small and Rogen is so big, Paul is so bald, while Rogen is so hairy. Once I got over that, it was fine.

Layer Cake (2005)

I've watched a lot of movies about gangsters, about wanna-be gangsters, about business men mistaken for gangsters, about people trying to break into the life, about people trying to break out of the life. There comes a point when you think that you've seen just about all there is to see in the genre. Sure, you'll still watch new films because of this actor or that set-up, and they're enjoyable, but the enjoyment is much like the premise, derivative.
Then along comes a movie like this one, which I must say that I've known about for years but didn't watch because it was always described to me as a, "British gangster flick about a good enough bloke who wants to get out of the life but due to matters beyond his control can't". Well, that sounds an awful lot like every Jason Statham gangster film I've ever seen. Sure, that first one was entertaining, and the second one had some funny bits, and the third one had that one hot actress, and then finally I'm not watching "that" film anymore. but then one day, as you're working your way through a particular actor's works, in my case Daniel Craig, it comes up again and you give in and think that at least Craig and co-star Sienna Miller are pretty to look at. And then you notice once you've finally got the box in your hand that the film also stars some other really great actors like Colm Meaney and George Harris, oh and some guy named Michael Gambon.
Craig plays Mr. X, well that's not his name, but they make a point of never naming him. He's a drug dealer at the distribution level. When the story begins he is finishing what is going to be his last job. He's put aside a lot of money which he has laundered and also has a stake in a very lucrative and more importantly legitimate business. But the boss that X works for has other plans. There is a girl that needs to be found and there is a huge - million pill - drug deal that needs to be brokered.
Nobody is what they seem in this film. X is a "businessman", or so he states at the beginning, but by the end of the film, well he's as gangster as gangster gets. There's his boss that pretty much forces him into this deal, who turns out to be a snitch. There is cool-headed Morty (Harris) that is X's right-hand man, that is until he runs into a guy who sent him down the river for ten, that when Morty is done with him is in a coma after an extremely sever beating in a diner. There is the top-of-the-top criminal overlord, Temple (Gambon) who turns out to be just as dirty and duplicitous as the gangsters he looks down upon.
The girl that X is supposed to be rescuing is Temple's daughter and she doesn't need rescuing, but that puts X on Temple's radar. And the drugs to be moved were stolen from a former Serb Warlord that wants his merchandise back along with the head of everyone involved.
Every time you think that X is down, he's up, and every time that you think he's up, he's down. But in the end, he ends up with his retirement after all and the girl. For a minute or two.
The movie is brutal in a couple of parts, but nothing that you wouldn't expect from this genre. You're also surprised by who does and who doesn't die and who kills them. I think this was good enough to get me to take another look at the gangster films again, particularly British gangster films.

Nerd Do Well

Nerd Do Well
by
Simon Pegg
read by
Simon Pegg

I don't much go in for autobiographies. Well except for anything by Frank McCourt. Or "Bossypants" by Tina Fey. Or the Bill Clinton book. Okay, so maybe I do go in for autobiographies, but they're a small proportion of what I read or listen to. Okay, I admit that I liked the Hillary Clinton book, too, the one where she reads it. I guess Sarah Vowell's books are as much autobiographical as they are historical. Okay, maybe I am a fan of memoirs, at least by savvy sophisticated authors; I liked John Stewart's book too.
I've been a long-time fan of Simon Pegg, so even if I wasn't a fan of this form, there is a good chance that I would have checked it out, especially knowing that he was reading his own book. I heard interviews with Pegg on NPR when this book first came out and expected I was going to mostly hear about first breaking into television and how much he hated the new Star Wars movies, and probably a couple of silly jokes along the way. Well, I did get all of that, but in less depth than I was expecting, but the trade-off was that he told a lot more about himself than just those brief moments. In actuality, this book was much like Fey's "Bossypants", both in scope and in voice. From the outset, Pegg makes it clear he's not going too deep into his personal life, nor is his goal to talk ill about anyone else he's met along his path. He remained true to his word. There are two notable differences from the format that Fey took,though, one brilliant, one not so much. The first and brilliant difference is the story of Simon Pegg superspy and his android "man" servant in their efforts to save the world from annihilation. Very funny. If this was a movie - a James Bondesque spoof type film, I would so be all over watching it - especially if Pegg wrote and starred in it. The other, not-so-brilliant difference, is that Pegg doesn't share any of the non-positive times of his life. I don't know what kind of hardships the man has gone through, one could hope that they were few and far between, but other than mentioning that it took him a while to get how the whole stand-up comedy thing worked, we get nothing. From a writer as talented as Pegg, I expect that he could make any incident either touching or funny (or both). It would have been nice to hear a little more on the years it took him to break into the business. What was he doing while he was waiting for his various breaks? He mentions being lucky to get some or most of his opportunities, and luck implies that what he was doing wouldn't have gotten him the success he now enjoys without some type of intervention. I think the success would be more appreciated by us fans if we understood better how it was deserved. Now, I'm not saying that I want to hear how the man was down-and-out, addicted to smack, ready to kill a junky for his next fix - I have no reason to believe he lead that kind of life at all, I just want to know how he dealt with rejection of scripts or how it took him years on the comedy circuit to get noticed, that kind of thing.
I guess the short-comings of the book really set me up to get his next book where he promises to fill us in on what we missed out on in this book. When, that comes, I will eagerly await the audiobook, hopefully read by Pegg and to hear the further adventures of Pegg and his android "man" servant.

The Partly Cloud Patriot

The Partly Cloud Patriot
by
Sarah Vowell
read by
Sarah Vowell

As with all of Sarah Vowell's books, this history book is more memoir than history lesson. With the help of some of her friends doing voices of famous historical figures (Conan O'Brien as Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Colbert as Al Gore, Norman Lear as her friend Kevin, etc), Vowell visits existing presidential libraries to try and figure out what Clinton should do about his library - this book was published right after Bush took office).
Vowell goes on to recount Gore visiting a school before the Presidential election in '00 and starting out in San Francisco selling antique maps. Both are important in showing how she became the person she is, revelling in her nerdiness.
I do have one point of contention with Miss Vowell. She claims to be 5'4" tall, but I ran into her, almost literally, at Wordstock in Portland a couple of years ago and what struck me, other than "Oh my god! I almost crushed Sarah Vowell!", was how short she was. I am 6'2" and have and have had lots of friends who are right around 5' tall, I feel like I can safely say that Vowell is much shorter than her claimed height.
There are wonderful musical interludes throughout the story. Most are purely instrumental, while some have vocals. All are by the band They Might Be Giants. The "It Could Be Worse" song written by They Might Be Giants is brilliant. It's based on a part of the book, where Vowell explains how she makes herself feel better in times of woe.
The partly cloudy partriot that the book is named after, Vowell reveals to be herself. She explains essentially that she's a patriot, and not a Patriot. The former love their country, even when things aren't how they like it, maybe even especially when things aren't how they like it. But the latter case - Patriots with a capital P - are the kind of demagogues that make her embarassed to be an American; the kind of people who say things like, "Love it or leave it!" and proclaim that anyone who doesn't think exactly like them is not a patriot. Vowell totally rocks this. She is talking about Liberals and Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, specifically the election and Supreme Court case that but George W. Bush in the Whitehouse, but her argument extends the other way, to the people on the left, and she is clear that she means them too.
I always love hearing a book read by the author. It is so much more real, somehow. Vowell doesn't have a beautiful voice, but she does have a sincere one. I've heard her enough times - on This American Life, in The Incredibles and three other audiobooks, that I couldn't imagine listening to one of her works without her reading it to me.